Default Page Response

What happens when someone opens a chat with your Facebook Page, or messages your WhatsApp number, without a survey reference?

Fly answers them with a default form, which has the special shortcode 305. Create any form with the shortcode 305 and it becomes the default for anyone who arrives without a reference.

You might want to tell people something along the lines of "Sorry, if you saw an ad for a survey, please go back and click on the ad." This helps prevent people from starting your survey who you're not advertising to.

However, you can put any survey you want under the 305 shortcode.

It is also where misrouted people land

This is the part worth understanding before you launch a study.

If a recruitment ad's reference is missing or mangled, Fly does not know which survey the person wanted — so it starts them on the default form. Nothing errors. They get whatever 305 says, answer it, and finish. In the data they look like completions of the default form rather than like a failure.

That is the most expensive failure mode in a chat survey, because it is invisible: your study shows almost no arrivals while the ad spends normally.

It happens most easily on WhatsApp, where the ad's prefilled message is the only carrier of the reference. See WhatsApp Surveys.

Two practical consequences:

• Make 305 say something. If it is a single "sorry, wrong place" message, a spike in people finishing it is a signal you can actually read. If it is a real survey, misrouted respondents are silently mixed into someone's data.
• Check arrivals early. After turning an ad on, confirm that people are arriving on your shortcode, not on 305, before letting the budget run.

What the default form does not do

A message that names no survey will not restart or replace a conversation someone already has. If a respondent who is part-way through your survey — or who has already finished it — taps "Get Started" again, or sends a message that carries no reference, they are left where they are rather than being moved onto the default form.

This is deliberate: being silently moved onto a different survey is worse than nothing happening. It does mean a respondent who has finished and comes back gets no reply at all. If you want a re-engagement path, build it explicitly — an ad, a link with a real form.<shortcode> reference, or a bail.